calm and chaos
by LaughingSenselessly
Summary: Stiles doesn't mince any words. "Why'd you kiss me, that day?" (Or: the one where Stiles and Lydia finally clear the air about that locker room kiss. Post-Season 5.)
**A/N: prompt fill for stydia-fanfiction on tumblr: Lydia and Stiles finally talk about the kiss. many thanks to scileslife on tumblr for beta-reading!**

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"Let's talk about panic attacks."

Lydia is jolted out of her reverie to see the guidance counsellor still hovering over her and the session only five minutes in.

After everything that's happened at Beacon Hills High, they've started doing counselling sessions with the students. A little too late, in Lydia's opinion, but there you go. She knows that a lot of her peers are suffering from PTSD-like symptoms and from trauma. So, the school got a bunch of professionals, counsellors, psychologists and all the rest of the ones Lydia can't stand, to collaborate on creating this program for the high school. Once a week, with a group of six other students in a cohort. Something about 'making new friends' and 'building a support group'. Lydia thinks it's extraordinarily stupid.

So, Lydia tends to spend these sessions not paying any attention, plopping into her plastic chair in the small circle and spending the next fourty minutes doodling the integral symbol on her notebook in assorted fonts. She really doesn't need another shrink trying to tell her how she's feeling without knowing the whole story. Except that just now the counsellor Marie is watching her with some expectancy on her face, clearly having seen Lydia get jolted back into reality. "Miss Martin? Do you have anything to say on the subject?"

Lydia smooths down a flyaway that's found it's way into her vision, delivering up a wide, fake smile. "Hmmm. I'll pass," she says, voice sugary sweet.

Marie frowns. There's a sound from across the circle, something like a snicker which hastily becomes a cough. Lydia lets her eyes flicker up to meet the perpetrator's eyes.

Stiles has smothered his own grin into his hand. Having Stiles as part of her "support group" has been a coincidence both reassuring (like when Marie was talking about sleepwalking and he sat next to her holding her hand tightly but inconspicuously for the entirety of the session) and with the potential to be rather annoying, like right now— he's sitting across from her today, and his legs are stretched obnoxiously across the small circle, soles of his shoes almost brushing against the tips of her shoes. She lets her eyes drop down to his feet and then slowly and deliberately back up to his face. He gets the message, immediately reining in his legs and tucking them under his chair with an apologetic look. She gives him one more look, like, "now _keep_ them there," and then resumes staring at the ceiling.

Throughout this entire exchange, the room has been silent, and Marie sighs and throws her hands up. "If we don't make any progress, I can't let you guys go," she huffs. "Believe me, you've all made it very clear how much you dislike these sessions. But the faster you start participating, the faster you'll all get out of here." Stiles perks up at this, encouraging the counsellor to go on. "I _know_ that many of you have experienced a panic attack. Now, what are the symptoms?"

The silence lingers for three long seconds until Stiles finally speaks in a resigned sort of way. "You— you start shaking," he says.

Marie leaps on that eagerly. "What else do you experience?"

Someone else, a girl sitting near Lydia, pipes up before Stiles can answer. "Uh, I start sweating and my chest starts hurting and everything seems kind of hazy."

"Heart feels like it's going way too fast," someone else says.

"Your skin starts tingling all weird," Danielle says, demonstrating by tapping her fingers against her arm.

Marie is delighted and also seemingly overwhelmed with the amount of responses. "Anything else?" She asks Stiles breathlessly, now targeting the instigator of all of this participation.

Lydia watches his Adam's apple bob nervously in his throat before he speaks again. "And— and—" his eyes dart around the circle before settling, perhaps unconsciously, on Lydia's, "I feel like I can't breathe."

His brown-eyed gaze holds hers for a beat, and then she looks down, crossing her legs in front of her.

"Okay," Marie says, delighted. "So, you all seem to be able to recognize the symptoms of a panic attack, but what can we do in that situation?" When no one says anything, she sighs again. "Alright, let's try something else. What can we do to _help_ someone in that situation? I'll start us off. To help someone with a panic attack, we should be predictable. Avoid surprises."

Lydia thinks her cheeks might be burning but she continues to avoid the heavy and increasingly suspicious gaze of the boy sitting across from her.

"You don't like being touched," someone pipes up. "By anyone. You don't want anyone around."

Stiles makes a little sound.

"Not necessarily true," Lydia finally speaks up if only because of Stiles' eyes burning holes into her forehead, and Marie's eyes are comically wide at this point. "Sometimes it helps to have someone nearby."

Stiles' eyes are narrowed slightly.

"That is true," Marie agrees, and Lydia relaxes until the counsellor adds, "usually they are just there to talk you through it."

"Yeah, when you're having a panic attack you don't want to be touched," Danielle adds. There's noises of assent around the circle.

"Maybe you do," Stiles shoots at her, almost defensively. "Maybe they help if… you know… they're someone who's special to you. Someone you love. I mean," he says hastily, while Lydia can feel her mouth falling open, "someone you know well."

 _Someone you love._

Her heart is beating so fast in her ears she almost doesn't catch Marie say, "and how do your loved ones help, in your experience?" Silence again.

Lydia's unable to stop the flashback of hands clutching cheeks and her lips sliding down his and a locker room and his rough voice saying _How'd you do that_?

Lydia's staring up very hard at the ceiling, but she hears Marie press, "Mr. Stilinski?"

Lydia finally looks down against her better judgment to see his Adam's apple working nervously. His eyes are very wide. "I…"

She knows he's thinking about the same thing she is, and bites her lip subconsciously.

His eyes follow the movement, and a pink flush steals over the tips of his cheekbones.

"Mr. Stilinski?" Marie says again.

Lydia whips around to glare at the counsellor. "Obviously, he doesn't want to talk about it," she snaps. "I thought you had a psychology degree. For a supposed counsellor, you're not very good at reading the signs, are you?"

Marie's mouth drops open.

—

Well, if Lydia had known that spouting off some very real truths about the counsellor's ability to do her job would've gotten her kicked out of the session, she would've done it a long time ago. She's fuming and click-clacking her way down the hall, not entirely sure where she's going because there's still ten minutes until the period ends, when she hears him from down the hall.

"Lydia— wait!"

She walks a little faster.

He catches up, of course, hitching his backpack strap higher onto his shoulder. He's a little out of breath. "Lydia—"

"How did you get out of there?" She cuts him off.

He gapes. "I just told her I needed to go to the bathroom."

"And she bought that?"

"Oh, she let me go after I used some of Mr. Harris' imagery of," he adapts a monotone, "my 'bladder exploding and urine pouring out of my every orifice'. I guess that sonofabitch was good for something," he mumbles.

Lydia almost smiles before she remembers that there's a reason he asked to leave the session. And it doesn't bode well for her studious avoidance of the topic for the past year.

"So, anyway," he says, right as she's thinking this, "about, um, that."

Lydia's now debating how long it would take her to get to the girl's room, and weighing the possibility that he'd follow her in there if he was determined enough.

When she says nothing he grabs her arm, stopping her from walking. "Hey, wait." He sounds exasperated.

She doesn't turn, deigning instead to stare at the empty hallway in front of her. "What?" She asks flatly.

His voice turns all soft. She hates it because it makes her want to turn around and look at him. And that's a bad idea because she knows how his eyes probably look right now, all wide and golden-irised and framed with long dark lashes that melt her right into the floor. "Are we ever gonna talk about it, Lydia?"

"Talk about what?"

"Right. Please remember that I know your IQ. Don't play dumb."

She forgets her earlier resolution not to look at him and wheels on Stiles with a glare. She knows she can't escape this; she can tell by his tone of voice, he's going to keep trying. It's best to face it head on, say something to get him off her back, and then move on. Or at least, try to. Like how she's been trying to move on for months. "Fine. Talk," she all but spits.

He doesn't mince any words. "Why'd you really kiss me, that day?"

Somehow, even though this is exactly what she was expecting, she's sent reeling by his bluntness, at a loss for what to tell him. She spends several seconds just blinking. "To make you hold your breath," she finally says lamely.

Because, okay, the thing is, she's not entirely _sure_ why she kissed him that day.

He watches her, shrewdly. "There's not a single reputable source that says that would happen."

Okay, he's obviously done his research. "I don't know, Stiles! I thought kissing you would calm you down, okay?"

"Calm me—" He seems at a loss, shaking his head. "Lydia, why the _hell_ did you think that would calm me down?"

"Because I knew you felt that way about me!" She bursts angrily, hating him for making her have to work her way through her thought process that day. That day wasn't just the day they kissed.

It was also the day she felt something stirring in her chest, something that she hadn't ever realized was growing there, and it took flight when he had whispered: _That was really smart_.

" _Felt_?" He repeats slowly, and Lydia can't understand the puzzled look in his eyes.

She waves her arm dismissively. "Or— your little crush, or whatever it was, I know it's over now—"

He's blushing again, and when she says _that_ he huffs an embarrassed little laugh, eyes flickering down to his feet and back up to her eyes and then back down again, and her lips falter in speech as she suddenly starts considering what that means.

And she suddenly can't catch her breath, because she's remembering what he said back in the counselling session: someone who's special to you, he said, referring to her. Someone you love... "What?" She asks quietly.

"Nothing," he says, but he's lying, it's so clear to her; she doesn't need to be able to listen to his heart rate to tell.

 _Someone you love._

"Tell me," she commands, because something's springing up in her chest and she doesn't know what it is but it feels a little bit like hope.

He looks up again, gazing somewhere down the hall past Lydia, and runs a hand over his face. "It's just… I never thought I was that great at hiding it."

She stares at him.

... _hiding_ it?

And it all clicks. He's still… His feelings never changed, just his confidence in success. He went and hid his feelings away in a box, and her own feelings came out of a box, and they were never out there at the same time.

She thinks her jaw might have dropped open; meanwhile, he immediately starts to backtrack. "Look, Lydia, I know, you don't feel that way about me and it's okay, I've gotten over it— well, no not really," he adds, and then immediately looks to be regretting saying that as well, "but the point is you should— you should be happy—"

She cuts him off, with her lips.

She surges forward but he's not expecting it and in fact he's tilting his head when she goes in, so her lips barely connect with the side of his mouth and her nose bumps awkwardly into his, and a second later he's already rearing back a foot, eyes wide and alert like someone just dumped a bucket of ice water on him.

They stare at each other for a split second. The hallway is silent asides from their unsteady breathing.

"Lydia," he croaks. " _What_?"

She ignores the confusion and disbelief in those two words. "Do you still feel that way about me?" Her heart is in her throat.

"I— "

"Answer the question, Stiles!"

"Yes, but—"

She leans forward again, but this time he stops her, leaning back and placing a finger on her lips instead. "Wait—" and she would feel sorry for him, how he's scrambling to catch up, except he's been such an _idiot_ over the past few months that really all his shock should be blamed on him. "Are you saying you—"

"I do," she cuts him off and tries to lean forward again. But he gently pushes her back by the shoulders, and she relents, easily falling back into the row of lockers.

He stares at her, pupils blown wide. "You like me." He sounds absolutely shell-shocked.

She rolls her eyes, trying not to look as affected as she feels. "If we're talking kindergarten terminology here, yes."

He swallows. He looks like a man whose entire life has shifted in the span of half a minute, and he doesn't know what's real anymore.

She kind of feels the same way, to be honest.

"Since when?" His voice is barely even a whisper.

It's her turn to swallow now, because she doesn't really have an answer to that question herself. She doesn't know when she started falling in love with Stiles Stilinski. It snuck up on her. It wasn't a sudden realization, it was a series of things. It was in a montage of those instances where he made butterflies erupt in her stomach, in all the times he'd touched her in the most innocent places in the most intimate ways. It was in the way that he looked at her, no matter how she'd changed after all this time, like she was his salvation and his destruction and he'd let her save him or ruin him without question.

She doesn't know how to say all that, so she delivers the most honest answer she can give. "I don't know," she says simply. "It's been a long time."

Stiles blinks, heavily, as if she's delivered a blow.

He lifts a hand to cradle her cheek, and she can't help but lean her face into his palm. Then he leans in very slowly and presses his lips against hers very deliberately, very innocently, lingering for a beat and then pulling away. She's left shaky by the gesture. Still very close, he searches her eyes earnestly, looking for something. And then he seems to find what he was looking for in her gaze because his eyes flicker back down to her mouth. He licks his lips, making then red and wet, and his fingers adjust their hold of her face, like he's trying to find the best way to cradle her jaw properly. Like he's trying to find the perfect way to kiss her. He takes a shallow, shaky sort of breath, and carefully, oh so very _carefully_ , he leans back in.

He pauses a hair's width away from her mouth, and she waits but he doesn't go any further. He just breathes, and she breathes, and she winds her arms around his neck as best she can around his hoodie, leaning in the extra inch to mold their lips together.

She's going for aggressive, because that's what she _wants_ after all this time, but he slows her down immediately, lips soft and yet firm in their pace as if reprimanding her for her impatience. She lets him lead them, and it stays tame for a few seconds. He kisses her, he lets go. He kisses her again; lets go. Each kiss is lingering and gives her the feeling that he's going to deepen it but he never does, he just keeps pulling back to watch her in between.

These little kisses steal the breath from her lungs. She's never been _kissed_ like this.

Then he kisses her again, and then one of his hands slides down to her waist, and his lips are suddenly hard and insistent, crowding her against the lockers, and finally, _yes_ , she's in a territory she's familiar with. Her hands find their way under his hoodie, warmed by his body heat and sliding up his back. His muscles shudder a little against her touch. And when she opens her mouth and their tongues slide together and her nails contract against his skin he actively trembles all down his body, she can feel it in every place he's pressed against her.

She makes him _tremble_. She is awed by this power she has over him, doesn't know what to do with it except that she knows that he has that equal power over her. She knows it when one of his hands slides down from her face and trails down the line of her throat, and then his fingers, the touch light but firm, keep trailing down the side of her body and she trembles at that, too.

She is considering the distance to the nearest janitor's closet when the bell rings, sudden and abrupt, cutting through the haze around them. She jumps at the sound and so does he, making a sound like "oh" before releasing a shaky breath when he realizes it's just the bell.

Doors open down the hall and students start to flood out of their classrooms, heading to their next period. In a matter of moments the hallway is filled and buzzing. But Stiles and Lydia barely move, standing across from one another against this row of lockers.

He's staring at her with a golden, reckless abandon in his eyes, like he's been thinking about the janitor's closet too. "Lydia," he says. It's all he seems capable of saying.

She swallows. Her lips are tingling. "Stiles," she manages.

"Just so you know," he says, his voice huskier than ever, "kissing you doesn't make me feel very calm."

A chill races down her spine at that. She rubs her thighs together under her skirt, subconsciously. She thinks he catches the movement by the way his eyes flicker down and stay there a moment too long. The air-conditioned hallway suddenly feels unbearably hot. "What does it make you feel?" She asks, going for coy but sounding wrecked.

He opens his mouth and then closes it again before speaking, and Lydia strongly suspects he was going to say something very unfiltered. "Makes me feel like I need to count my fingers."

"Here's an idea," Lydia says, "you can stand out here and count your fingers, or…" She leans forward to grab a fistful of his hoodie, yanking him closer so she can murmur. "Or you can come with me somewhere quiet and put those fingers to better use."

"You act like I can't multitask," he says with a mock frown, but his eyes are sparkling with delight. It's written in every line of his expression— he's _happy_.

Lydia thinks she looks exactly the same way.

She leans in even more and murmurs:

"Prove it."

—

(He can multitask.)

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 **A/N: if you enjoyed this, please consider leaving a review, as it would quite seriously make my day!**

 **wellsjahasghost on tumblr :)**


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